drop rule
by VoiSieteQui
Summary: Midorima dreams of the past, the almosts, and the conversations that they could never have had when Akashi was still alive. akamido oneshot, suicide


_confession: I've kind of forgotten that this ffn account existed, oops! rather than let it die, here's something crossposted from ao3!_

_**note**: Please keep in mind that this fanfic was written before the publication of the Rakuzan/Seirin match, so the details about Akashi's family had not been revealed at the time. As a result, there is some inconsistency with what's been revealed in canon._

* * *

Between them is an extremely expensive but simple-looking shogi board—one that had been gifted to (-) from his grandfather before he passed away five years ago. It is very beautiful. The sound it makes when pieces are set on it is both hollow and full.

(-) looks up and smiles.

"_Well, should we start_?"

* * *

Black pawn to 7f.

* * *

Things to note:

This story is composed of only a beginning and an ending. This is the beginning.

The narrator of this story is Midorima Shintarou: male, nineteen, living in a university dorm with a roommate whose name he still can't remember, studying to become the doctor that his parents had always dreamed for him to be.

The main character of this story is Akashi Seijuurou: male, nineteen, lying on fairly uncomfortable dry ice in a very dark room of his house, dead for over the past twenty-two hours because of circumstances that everyone claimed were beyond his control.

The story takes place at least one year after the two of them have left high school and parted ways without maintaining contact. For the record, Midorima only remembers Akashi's face because of his dreams and the old Teikou photo tucked in the back of his wallet. Akashi does not remember Midorima's face, because he is dead and is spared the burden of remembering faces.

This marks the end of the beginning. We will now move into the ending.

* * *

White pawn to 8d.

* * *

It's an old picture of when Seijuurou was still young and sitting next to his grandfather at the table in one of his first birthdays. His hair stuck up at odd places and the majority of his face was smeared with white cake frosting, smudged over his lips with small, pudgy hands. His grandfather is dressed traditionally and keeps a hand on the plate, face frozen in mid-laugh. Seijuurou is grinning too, from ear to ear, as he reaches for another dollop of cake with his bare hands. His mother is nowhere to be seen, and his father was behind the camera.

Shintarou squints at the picture. Something's different. He looks up at Seijuurou and calls out, "Akashi, hey." The insistent banging on the piano stops for a second and Seijuurou turns around, a confused and slightly irritated frown on his face. "Smile?"

Seijuurou stares at him, quizzically, before complying. It is hesitant and suspicious and Shintarou definitely would have laughed had he any less self-control.

Shintarou looks back at the picture in his hands, and then back up at Seijuurou. He was right. "You have dimples in this picture?" Seijuurou's face lights up immediately with understanding.

"Is that the birthday picture?" Shintarou nods. "That was before I had surgery to have it removed. And I only had one." Seijuurou gets up from the piano bench and crosses the room to look down at the picture from over Shintarou's shoulder. His finger reaches out and taps at his own face, right on a particular point on his cheek. "Here," he says. "On the right."

It's a very obvious dent, pricks at his skin right above the corner of his mouth and makes his smile sweeter and kinder. For a deformity, it was quite beautiful. "Why did you have it removed?"

"My mother. She feared it would make me look childish when I grew older. She hunted down a method to remove it, looked for a surgeon that was qualified and respected enough to perform the operation. It was a huge ordeal. If she hadn't found someone, I'm sure she would have attempted it herself."

* * *

Black pawn to 6f.

* * *

Shintarou sits at his desk, a multi-variable calculus book cracked open on his desk, and traces out strings and strings of numbers and signs that leave loose trails of ink from where he doesn't lift his pen enough. He is trying to find the area confined within three frustrating-looking functions, a mess of square roots and negative x's raised with negative y's, given a compact region of 'insert more nonsense here'.

The phone rings. He is very close to finishing the problem. Sighing, he dips his head and continues.

There is momentary silence, before the phone begins to ring again.

His unnamed roommate looks over from his bunk bed, the magazine that he had been reading crinkling in his hands. "Dude, just pick it up."

Shintarou wills him to shut up and mind his own business, the phone as well, because he only needed to record the value of _f_ at where the first contact was established between the region and a level curve.

The phone rings two more times before he finishes his work. Even then, he takes the time to drop his pencil, sigh, and pop his neck. This takes the duration of another one call.

He picks it up after letting it ring a bit longer.

Akashi Seijuurou is dead and the funeral is on Saturday.

* * *

White pawn to 3d.

* * *

"Do you know this song?"

Shintarou remembers, clearly, shaking his head no. He was bent over a low table with all of his math books and notes fanned out around him like a force field. He is spinning his pen in his hands, between his second and middle finger, and occasionally between his middle and ring finger.

Shintarou also remembers hearing Seijuurou's humming from the other end of the room. It's a bit off key to his sensitive ear, and slides too much when he tries to go higher or lower. It's the closest thing that Shintarou ever comes to hearing him sing.

* * *

Black rook to 6h.

* * *

"How did it happen?" Shintarou asked.

"The family told me it was poison," Tetsuya says calmly. His sugar cube rises to the top of his teacup.

A waitress walking by nearly steps on a wet patch and overturns her serving tray; Shintarou reaches out and grabs her arm to help steady her. She smiles in thanks before moving on.

"Murder?"

Someone behind them coughs loudly, and the sound of a large bus driving by momentarily fills the café. Tetsuya sets his spoon to the side and brings the cup to his lips. Shintarou can hear his light mumble, "Possibly," from over the rim.

Shintarou's own coffee is getting cold. The apple tart he ordered sits there, watching them both.

"Kise said it was something else."

Tetsuya's response is immediate.

"Kise-kun is wrong."

* * *

White silver general to 6b.

* * *

Seijuurou is far from perfect. Shintarou notices this quickly.

There are moments, when they're lounging around a classroom or in Shintarou's bedroom or Seijuurou's living room with that familiar shogi board set up between them, when Seijuurou's brows knit in frustration and he subconsciously brings up a hand to gnaw at his thumbnail in thought. Shintarou finds it disgusting, but doesn't start to tell him off for it until about a year after he notices.

It is a mute afternoon, silent until he makes a quiet _tsk_ when he sees Seijuurou bringing his finger to his lips. Seijuurou glances up and over, surprised, and slowly lowers the hand again with a near-sheepish look on his face.

That is when Shintarou learns that Seijuurou's insistent tapping while he thinks is far, far worse.

* * *

Black pawn to 1f.

* * *

Shintarou is back in the sun-drenched classroom. The shogi board is set with a game that he can't quite remember playing, but he has a gold general and three pawns sitting on his side. He's running his finger along the edge of one of the pawns, but the ridges are too worn out and soft to dig into his skin.

Seijuurou is sitting opposite him. He's saying something, but Shintarou can't hear.

"Speak up," he tries saying. Seijuurou ignores him and his lips keep opening and closing around silent words, eyes looking down on the board so his lashes spread spidery shadows on his cheekbones. A corner of his mouth is turning up, and Shintarou assumes that whatever he's saying is clever. Seijuurou was always good at saying clever things.

Shintarou clears his voice. Seijuurou quiets briefly before looking up, eyelashes flitting upwards as he blinks. His smile is fairly obvious when he next speaks, all soft lines at the corner of his mouth and curves at his lower eyelids.

"Akashi," Shintarou tries calling out again, but his voice is hoarse and cracks, and he has to clear his throat. He can feel the words leaving his mouth but can't hear them himself. It's the most disorienting sensation.

Seijuurou continues talking. He reaches towards a piece on the board before hesitating and pulling it back while simultaneously responding to whatever it was that he could hear that Shintarou couldn't. Shintarou sees his hand starting to drift up towards his mouth again.

He presses his tongue to the back of his teeth, ready on reflex.

"Tsk."

Shintarou pauses. He hadn't been the one to make that sound.

He turns.

Next to him sits Midorima Shintarou, aged 12, in a neatly done Teikou uniform. Midorima's face is smaller, rounder, with glasses that almost look too big on him and that are always sliding a bit down his nose. Shintarou is surprised to see that he's smiling as well, albeit a small one.

Midorima begins to mouth words, and Shintarou watches as Seijuurou's grin grows until he breaks open into what he assumes is genuine laughter. Midorima is laughing, too.

Shintarou squints. Seijuurou's face while he's laughing is blurry. He leans across the shogi board to try and see his smile clearer, but suddenly the blur spreads to the entire room. The colors are dulled and mixed. Everything fades to gray, then black.

Shintarou turns to see Midorima, watching him now with a small frown. His is the only face that is still crystal clear. They are the only two people there.

Midorima's stare is full of pity. "Tsk," he says.

* * *

White pawn to 1d.

* * *

Shintarou walks up a hill early one morning. The sun is too bright for it to be a dream. It sears into his arms and coaxes sweat out to stain the cuffs of his shirt.

He can see Seijuurou's back at the top, situated neatly next to a large tree that has its limbs bent as if serving as his protector. His hair is nearly turned pink from the sunlight, and he wears a black sweater that is much too warm for the temperature. He doesn't turn when Shintarou rounds the crest.

Shintarou drops a bouquet of wide white lilies and azaleas with tissue-paper petals into his lap. There is a bright red spider lily at the center. Seijuurou doesn't look down.

"For you."

There isn't even a hint of a change in expression on his face. Shintarou didn't expect any. He sighs and sits down next to Seijuurou under the shade of the tree.

"What can you see that I can't?"

Seijuurou closes his eyes. The sun is gone. His fingers tighten around the wax paper of the bouquet as the wind picks up and plucks off a few leaves from their tree.

"You have to help me understand, Akashi. Please."

* * *

Black silver general to 3h.

* * *

There is a specific picture that Shintarou recalls very clearly.

Seijuurou is sitting by his late-mother's record player, his elbow resting against the wood of the table and his chin propped up in his palm with white knuckles curled over his mouth in thought. He is wearing his standard Teikou uniform, except his blazer is off and hung neatly by the door. His sleeves are rolled to his elbows and the bottoms of his slacks are hitched up enough to display the pale skin and blue veins of his feet. His tie is undone, and the top few buttons of his shirt are popped open for comfort's sake. He remembers Seijuurou's eyes being closed and his teeth working on the inside of his lower lip. His pinky is tapping very subtly against his ring finger to the slow beat of the song playing. The sun wasn't too bright that day, and the Akashis were always the type to keep their blinds drawn. The orchid and ivy plants that Seijuurou's father had placed in his room stood vigil by the window.

Shintarou remembers that he still had a baby face back then. They both did, maybe.

* * *

White king to 4b.

* * *

Ryouta _had_ said it was something else. Shintarou still recalls the conversation.

"_Do you know what they found in his room_?" Ryouta had paused expectantly over the line, voice made harsh by how close his mouth is to the phone. Shintarou could hear the yelling of his manager in the background, but Ryouta must have felt that the death of one of his ex-best friends was more important than a touch-up before the next session.

Shintarou sighed, "What did they find?"

There's another pause. This time it is not intentional. Ryouta's manager had had enough and dropped their call.

Shintarou checked his phone not a while longer and spotted a text from Ryouta, stating: _thye foudn drugs apparently talk to yuo about it later maanger is calling now_

* * *

Black silver general to 7h.

* * *

There are different levels of frustration for Seijuurou. They are so minute but glaringly obvious once you start to read the patterns.

When he is simply thinking, Shintarou realizes that Seijuurou alternates sucking or gnawing on the far left or far right corners of his mouth. This continues for as long as he's mulling over any given problem, and only stops when he gives the two consecutive blinks to indicate that he's reached some conclusion.

When he is slightly frustrated, his lips tighten and draw towards the left corner, and there are times when you can tell he's working at the inside of his bottom lip.

A bit more, and his finger starts tapping on the table. He typically lets loose with one tiny huff of frustration at this point, but it's always just a small exhale through his nose. People who don't look for it still wouldn't be able to notice.

Some more, and then his leg starts shaking as well. Even longer, and he's rubbing at his collarbone, eyebrows drawn into the smallest of creases.

At the peak of frustration, his right hand starts drifting up to his mouth and—

"_Tsk_."

* * *

White king to 3b.

* * *

Now Playing: the Song in Akashi Seijuurou's Bedroom (AKA: Stairway to Heaven, Led Zeppelin)

* * *

Black silver general to 6g.

* * *

The murder weapons as found on the scene:

(x1) bottle of Bordeaux

(x3) empty plastic bottles, white, label-less

(x1) crumpled note in the hand of a corpse

* * *

White pawn to 5d.

* * *

Back in those early winter days of school, Seijuurou would always be sitting at the desk in Shintarou's music room, breezing through his own homework while Shintarou sits at the piano and runs through scales and waltzes and sonatinas. He had always looked up from his work and commented on Shintarou's playing, mentioning that he liked this or that song. Shintarou notices that he likes louder, minor songs more.

A few months later, on a day when neither of them had homework and Shintarou is running through Bach's Invention 4 in D minor, Seijuurou looks up from the shogi board that he had been fiddling around with and asks if Shintarou could teach him how to play something. Shintarou has no reason to say no, and he swears Seijuurou almost looks excited when he sits down on the piano bench next to him and frowns at the notes on the page.

They spend the day playing scales. Seijuurou's fingers are stiff, don't bend easily, and when he presses down with one finger, all of his other fingers fly up awkwardly. He looks like he's putting too much effort on every single note, and Shintarou has to force himself not to laugh when Seijuurou's pinky can't even push down the key hard enough to make a sound. They make it through the C major scale, and by the end of it Shintarou realizes that, though Seijuurou looked like he was about to rip the keys off the piano, he had essentially declared war on the instrument and would not rest until he could pull at least one tune from it.

Shintarou spends the next few days flipping through his old music for something that he could teach Seijuurou to play. He eventually settles on one the songs he had played many long years ago, assuming correctly that Seijuurou would like it.

When Shintarou plays Bach's famous Solfeggietto for Seijuurou the following week, he finishes with a nod from his friend.

"I like it," Seijuurou says, and then immediately proceeds to ask Shintarou to play the beginning measures again so he can start memorizing the first few keys.

* * *

Black gold general to 5h.

* * *

The Serenity Prayer, it's called.

It is framed on the walls of Seijuurou's room. His mother had put it there, as one of the only gifts she had ever directly given to her son. After she was no longer with them, his father had forbade Seijuurou from ever removing it. Midorima remembers seeing it every time he enters Seijuurou's room and practicing his English on it.

It reads:

_God grant me the serenity _

_To accept the things I cannot change; _

_Courage to change the things I can; _

_And wisdom to know the difference._

* * *

White gold general to 5b.

* * *

Shintarou sits on the edge of his hotel bed late one night, head in his hands. He is trying to recall the last thing he ever said to Seijuurou. It's cheesy and trivial and utterly irrelevant—very human, though, he tell himself as justification.

He'll try, very hard, but he'll never remember. It was simply too many years ago, and was too insignificant of a phrase for him to possibly remember.

For the record though, it was, "You too," to Akashi's, "Take care of yourself in the future, Shintarou."

* * *

Black king to 4h.

* * *

Shintarou is gently lulled awake with the sounds of foreign speech from whatever strange movie Seijuurou had put in this time. Sunlight is filtering its way through Seijuurou's window and casts lines on Shintarou's legs. It's warm. He can hear the buzzing of the overhead fan.

"What's happening?" he asks groggily, readjusting himself with his back against the bottom ridge of the couch. He looks up to see Seijuurou on the sofa, a plate in his lap. Seijuurou is eating an apple in the strange way that he always eats apples—with a sharp fruit knife, carving out strange slices and shapes off of the curve of fruit until he ends up with a strange, rectangular-looking core.

He was halfway through his third apple when Shintarou woke up. Seijuurou glances down at Shintarou before cutting out a long, thin slice of apple and lowering it to Shintarou's lips. "He was just tricked by his dad into going to an all-boys boarding school," he relays.

"Why did his father do that?" Shintarou leans forward to close his teeth around the apple slice and pull it from Seijuurou's fingers. His teeth crunch into it, and he shudders from the unexpectedly sour burst of flavor. Seijuurou _had_ always liked green apples the most.

"His mom didn't want to deal with him, and he was never close enough with his dad for him to understand. His parents were sick of him rebelling against them at every chance." Seijuurou cuts another slice before eating it straight off the blade and continuing, never looking away from the subtitles on the television, "He even lied to his teacher in the beginning that his mom had died. You've essentially missed the entire movie."

"You sleep through just as many movies as I do, you're not in any place to tell me off for this." Seijuurou offers him another slice and he accepts. "How many apples do you have?"

"There's four more in the kitchen." And two sitting on the table in front of him.

"And you plan on eating them _all_ today?"

"If the movie runs long enough." He makes one last cut off the apple and then hands what's left of the core to Shintarou, who takes and studies it with a frown.

"You're wasting too much."

"You like cleaning up the core. I thought this arrangement was working well." It's true. Shintarou bites down on what's left of the apple, careful to avoid the seeds, as Seijuurou reaches for another one from the table. The actors in the movie start yelling at each other again, but in French that neither of the two kids can understand without the text underneath.

* * *

White pawn to 8e.

* * *

Funny enough, Shintarou will never be able to remember what it feels like being on the receiving end of Seijuurou's real smiles. He leans against the railing of his hotel room's balcony one night, closing his eyes and letting the prickling of starlight against the back of his eyelids help jog his memory.

Seijuurou's half-smiles from early in their Teikou years were easy to recall. They can still be found in plenty of pictures, where caught he's side-eyeing Kise or Aomine's strange antics with a soft, exasperated tilt of his lips.

There's also that fond smile that he could be caught directing towards Kuroko or Murasakibara when he thought no one was looking. Aomine had called him out on it once, and Shintarou also remembers the awkward silence that the room had fallen into before Seijuurou had cleared his throat and asked icily if they really had the time to observe him with nationals nearing, and if he should help reduce some of that free time with additional conditioning. He hadn't smiled that time, but if Shintarou remembers correctly, his ears had nearly been the same color as his hair.

No, the one that he was trying to recall was the one that he had forgotten in his dream. Shintarou wanted to remember the smile that Seijuurou would only display when he was sitting with his best friend after school, those that he showed when he finally let his guard down.

In reality, he will never remember. Those types of smiles aren't quite so easily preserved.

* * *

Black bishop to 7g.

* * *

In his lifetime, Shintarou will never believe in a god.

He believes, instead, in two specific higher powers.

The first is luck.

The second is Akashi Seijuurou.

* * *

Black pawn to 4f.

* * *

When Seijuurou comes running in late to practice one weekend, it's Shintarou who sees him first and sees the most.

"Traffic," he tells the rest of team, and they believe him.

It's only Shintarou who notices the smallest crusting of soy milk at the corner of his mouth, the way the left side of his hair was slightly flattened from having just rolled out of bed, and the soft marks on his arms from the creases in his blankets and pillows.

Seijuurou catches him staring, and Shintarou raises a thumb to scratch pointedly at the right corner of his own lips. He watches as Seijuurou frowns and licks obediently at that same spot on his mouth before reaching up to swipe it with his thumb.

He looks at Shintarou, blinks once, and Shintarou nods. Seijuurou throws him an eye-smile in thanks before reaching up to ruffle his own hair back into place and running off to order Atsushi to stop harassing Tetsuya.

* * *

White pawn to 7d.

* * *

This specific game of shogi took place at approximately around the end of their first year of Teikou, twenty-eight days before the end of the term. Shintarou wonders why it's this particular game, out of the tens upon hundreds that they've played, that he always sees when he closes his eyes.

There's a reason for that.

Seijuurou knows why, but he's dead. So who does that leave?

* * *

Black king to 3i.

* * *

They kissed once. Only once—one night at Seijuurou's house, when Shintarou was propped up on his elbows on the airbed and Seijuurou had rolled over the left edge to let his face hover over Shintarou's own.

The saddest thing is that he doesn't remember the kiss very well. Shintarou can't recall exactly what it was they'd been talking about that had the two of them leaning towards each other in the darkness, but he does know that whatever it was must have been amusing because he _does_ remember thinking that Seijuurou's smile, in that moment, was too pretty to go un-kissed.

He doesn't remember what it felt like. He doesn't remember what Seijuurou tasted like, or how soft or pliable those lips had been between his own.

Honestly, all he remembers of the kiss is feeling something inside of him snap and then being so, so, _so_ terribly hungry. His mind had completely shut down with the flood of the sudden need to overdose on the boy in front of him, to completely drink him dry and taste every possible inch of him. He remembers how he did lose himself a bit, how he had repeatedly brought their lips together, not at all gently, until Seijuurou made a funny little noise that Shintarou would remember for a long time to come.

For the record, though, Seijuurou did respond, too, even if just a little bit—his mouth had closed hesitantly around Shintarou's bottom lip and tugged, and it was enough for Shintarou to shut down even more. He remembers that the feeling terrified him.

The most vivid memory that Shintarou has of that kiss, though, beyond his own desire, was that of Seijuurou's hands sliding up the sides of his face until his thumbs rested against his cheekbones and his fingers pushed at the sides of his neck. They fit there perfectly, as if the slopes of Shintarou's neck were carved only for his fingers.

Shintarou realizes, later, that they weren't there to draw him in closer—but they weren't there to push him away, either.

What had happened after that?

* * *

White silver general to 6d.

* * *

Tetsuya is an author. Not bestselling, nowhere near, but not bad. He has his critics, but also many that give him praise for his works. Despite whether they may appreciate his plot and messages, most still applaud him for his approach and his storytelling.

_Alive_, is the most common word to describe it. _This author is the type that can relay to you, in a room of total darkness, the color white_.

Despite this, though, Tetsuya stares critically at Shintarou one day and makes sure to remind him, quietly, that even the best trained professionals couldn't possibly find words for everything.

* * *

Black king to 2h.

* * *

It's slow going on Solfeggietto, what with Seijuurou claiming stubbornly that there was no point in him learning how to read sheet music if he learned faster from watching and copying the notes Shintarou pressed. They manage to learn two lines like this in a day. Shintarou is shocked by both the amount of effort that Seijuurou puts into this and the rate that he is memorizing the music.

He still can't play it that fast, though. And his hands still look absolutely horrible. Shintarou threatens to pull the age-old trick and hold a sharpened pencil point under Seijuurou's wrists if he didn't keep them up. Shintarou also makes sure to nag on the fact that Seijuurou isn't playing with his fingertips.

"This song can be played pretty fast, but there's no way you'd ever get any faster unless you fix your posture."

* * *

White pawn to 7e.

* * *

"Are you free after school today?"

Shintarou looks up from where he had been dribbling mechanically by the side of a court at the end of practice, mind lost to what had happened between him and Seijuurou four nights ago. When he sees Seijuurou's stare, brows furrowed just slightly in what must have been worry, Shintarou feels himself coloring immediately.

"Not today, I have tutoring," he lies instinctively. Seijuurou blinks. They both know that Shintarou only has tutoring on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It's a Monday.

To Shintarou's surprise though, Seijuurou doesn't call him out on it. "Okay," is all he says, and they leave it at that.

Seijuurou will ask him the next two days if he would like to hang out after school, but Shintarou will repeatedly turn him down. By Friday, Seijuurou will stop trying.

* * *

Black rook to 7h.

* * *

Seijuurou didn't die a pretty death. Shintarou is a med student—he would know.

With the medication that he had chosen to take, along with the alcohol found beside him, Shintarou knows that Seijuurou must have done a decent amount of digging in preparation for that night. The concoction that he had put together wasn't a joke at all.

He would have laid there on the bed after taking his poison, and would have felt the prickling of the loss of sensitivity in his limbs. He'd break into cold sweats as his heart is thrown into a panic and beats irregularly, too fast one moment and then too slow another. He would feel the beginnings of exhaustion, of the need to close his eyes and sleep, but his struggling body would keep him awake and conscious for a while longer. He'd feel detached. Possibly hallucinate. It will feel like an eternity before he is finally granted the ability to drift off. Even then, his body will convulse, throwing him into seizures. It will attempt to expel the pills, and he will vomit, but it will not wake him until he's at the brink of death, when he can feel his body shutting down from asphyxiation. It will be excruciatingly painful, his oxygen-deprived brain will send out distress signals that will throw him into an unconditional panic, and it is completely natural for the human to regret, at that point of no return, their actions.

(But he doesn't.)

Midorima feels fairly insulted. He couldn't imagine how Seijuurou could possible despise their world to the point where he would choose such a painful and ugly end.

* * *

White pawn captures black pawn on 7f.

* * *

They sit down for the conversation that they never had the chance to have when they were both alive, at two ends of a weathered wooden table whose white paint is chipping off and showing off the soft cream color underneath. The room is a perfect square, and the walls are lined with pale gothic windows. There is a single apple at the center of the table, and it is a clear, green color, shiny with wax.

The sun swirls around them both as they pull out the chairs and sit down at their spots, Seijuurou watching Shintarou and Shintarou studying him back.

"Hey," Seijuurou says first. He looks like he did in the most recent picture Shintarou saw of him—his hair a darker red than he had remembered it to be during school and grown out until it brushed at his eyebrows and the nape of his neck. His eyes had narrowed out and his cheekbones more defined with age, his shoulders filled and his body lost of all the adolescent awkwardness that Shintarou had remembered him with.

Even then, he still had those same clipped nails, that same defined Adam's apple, sharp collarbones, long, sparse eyelashes. He still has that incorrigible habit of always staring right in Shintarou's eyes when he speaks.

Shintarou leans forward. "We never did keep in contact, you know."

"A true pity." Seijuurou's lips tug upwards, and he leans back into the chair, crossing his arms over his chest. "I would have let you know that I was about to go to Vancouver, actually." Shintarou's eyebrow raises.

"Really, Vancouver?"

"To visit a business partner, it really wasn't supposed to take more than a week or so."

"You're nineteen."

"We start early in my family," Seijuurou says with the smallest smile.

"College?"

"Oh I was doing that too, of course. I only had classes on certain times of certain days, after all, and that's no excuse to slack off in the company."

Shintarou shakes his head, and he can feel Seijuurou almost laughing at his reaction. "Insane."

* * *

Black silver general captures white pawn on 7f.

* * *

Shintarou remembers now. He remembers what happened after that one kiss.

He had reached up and gently removed Seijuurou's hands from around his face. He had stuttered something close to an insincere apology. And then he had rolled over, so his back was facing the bed, and pulled the comforter up to his chin and lay there, shaking all night.

He doesn't know what Seijuurou did, but Shintarou believes that he didn't get any sleep, either.

* * *

White rook to 7b.

* * *

"The problem with you is that you _try_ too hard," Seijuurou spits at him from the other end of the classroom. Shintarou knows this is a dream because it is snowing red spider lilies and green apples outside and Seijuurou never did look at him with such disgust when he was alive.

"Try too hard with what?"

The question angers Seijuurou even more, and he actually reaches out and swipes their shogi board off the desk. Kings and generals and pawns clatter onto the ground. The sound is deafening.

"Try too hard find answers that don't exist, you asinine fool!"

The shogi pieces had spilled drops of blood where they broke and chipped against the ground and it spreads across the floor like a plague, eating up white tiles with an alarming fervor. Shintarou can feel it now, clinging to the soles of his shoes and dragging him slowly under. He closes his eyes and the red splatters onto his white and blue and black uniform and stains it from the bottom up.

"Just save me the trouble and tell me _why_, then," he says.

Seijuurou actually groans in exasperation. "Why _what_?"

"Why (-) (-) (-) (-)."

And then everything stops.

The room is hit with an ear-ringing silence.

Their entire conversation unwinds in Shintarou's mind. He can no longer recall any of it. The Feeling is back.

Seijuurou had been shaking, but the tremors start to slow. He isn't as angry. Instead, he looks almost helpless. That is worse.

Shintarou becomes dimly aware that this will be the end.

Somewhere from outside the window, it stops raining.

He can hear his legs giving out from under him and he begins to topple towards the rivers of blood at his feet. This time he is sure that he will drown in it.

Seijuurou opens his mouth to answer. "_Click_."

It's the sound of a piece being moved on the shogi board.

Shintarou falls to his knees and lands in a chair.

The room is drenched in sun. It drips off their clothes and pools into a sea on the floor. The calls of the baseball club practicing on the diamond can be heard all the way from the classroom. There are no rotten apples coating the ground, and no flowers to be seen.

He is sitting across from Seijuurou by their usual window, and Seijuurou has just moved his _. He doesn't look angry, only complacent.

Shintarou looks down at the ground and sees no blood.

"Your move," Seijuurou says.

* * *

Black pawn to 6e.

* * *

Seijuurou watches him closely as he plays the next bar of the song, his brows knit in a way that was almost comical. Shintarou would be lying if he said he wasn't surprised by how fast Seijuurou was picking this song up. They had only been working on it for a few weeks, and for someone who couldn't read any music and only learned through memorizing keys, Seijuurou was pretty impressive.

"It's basically the same thing as the measures back here, but transposed down a few lines," he said, pointing at the music.

Shintarou notices Seijuurou's hand twitching in frustration.

"_Tsk_."

"I was only going to try and play the next bar," Seijuurou sniffs. His hand settles, nonetheless.

* * *

White bishop captures black bishop on 7g. White bishop is promoted.

* * *

Through the next week, Shintarou will watch the bags under Seijuurou's eyes darken and his skin grow paler, until it gets so bad that the even other guys notice and ask him if he's been sleeping properly. He will brush it off the way he always does—with a simple, one phrase answer, before quickly turning the attention back to them so they'd forget the subject. It always worked.

What really scares Shintarou, though, is how sluggish Seijuurou gets, how dull his eyes look and how simple his responses become in his exhaustion. There's a real fright during a practice match that Thursday with a neighboring school, where Seijuurou is switched out because of how he nearly trips over his own feet and repeatedly misses passes that he could have normally handled with ease. The coach pulls him aside with disappointment and slight worry, Shuuzo marches over after the game to scold him with the best display of colorful language they had seen yet, but Seijuurou tells the both of them that it isn't that big of a problem, and he would see to it that he fixes it.

Shintarou overhears Satsuki whispering to Tetsuya, "I can't believe anything could get Akashi-kun so upset. He can't even sleep properly. I heard the coach is contacting his dad about getting him some medicine for it."

Tetsuya doesn't respond, but it's no coincidence that his eyes flicker over to Shintarou, even for a split second. Shintarou's blood runs cold. He convinces himself that there's no way Seijuurou would have put so much thought into what happened that one night.

* * *

Black rook captures white promoted bishop on 7g.

* * *

The Feeling:

1. (n.) the sensation that flits through the bodies of flowers when they crumble away in the middle of summer to a crippling heat that is beyond their control.

2. (n.) the crystalline snowflakes that gather at the blue and lifeless lips of a young girl sitting outside a church late one frosty winter night.

3. (v.) to experience a sensation similar to those described above.

* * *

White silver general to 5e.

* * *

Perhaps the most tragic realization in Akashi Seijuurou's life was that he had loved Shintarou more than Shintarou had loved him. The reasoning behind this thought lies in the fact that though Shintarou would trust Akashi with his heart, Akashi would trust Shintarou with his life.

Or so he thought. That, however, is extremely untrue. The real truth is that Akashi would never _need_ to trust someone else with his life, as he was always capable enough of taking care of himself during his nineteen short years. That is why his final spoken words, when the world is blurring around him and his left hand is stretched off the edge of the bed, searching for a presence that he had always presumed would be there and had later hoped would come back, were addressed to his oldest friend:

_If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to entrust you with my death_.

* * *

Black silver general captures white pawn on 8e.

* * *

The apple at the center of the table is beginning to yellow.

"Were you sad?"

"A bit."

"I'm sorry."

Seijuurou smiles just a bit at the apology. "Yeah, I know."

"I should have done something."

"Probably." It's Seijuurou's sense of humor coming out again, outlined by how his eyes curl just slightly in mirth and how his tone is too dry to be serious. Shintarou had missed it.

"When did it start?" This time Seijuurou's smile drops.

He hesitates for a while before leaning in and speaking softly to the white grain of the table. He describes so perfectly, to Shintarou, one particular moment in their past that Shintarou had also replayed over and over within his head until it was faded like old film. It is one of his biggest regrets, and Shintarou is not surprised. As expected, Seijuurou's death is his fault.

* * *

White drops pawn on 7f.

* * *

It takes a good two months of practicing afterschool at Shintarou's house before Seijuurou can run through all of Solfeggietto, and the first time he does so, he turns to Shintarou with such a childishly excited and expectant expression that Shintarou has to try not to snort in amusement.

"That's the end," Shintarou reassures him. Seijuurou turns back to his hands on the piano, practically beaming. His form is still technically not good, but it's enough to where he can play without any major problems. He can even play it a bit fast. "Can you do it all by yourself, though?"

Seijuurou accepts the challenge, beginning immediately. There is one time where he has to pause to remember, his eyes closed and lips moving just a tad with him muttering the melody, and a few other times where his fingers slip and hit the wrong note, but he makes it to the end with minimal scarring.

Shintarou makes a show of clapping for him. Seijuurou smiles and plays it again. It is the only song he will be able to play on the piano in his lifetime, and he falls into his final sleep playing through the notes through his head one last time, fingers twitching in the ghost of a pattern it had once been very in love with.

* * *

Black rook captures white pawn on 7f.

* * *

Shintarou sits on Seijuurou's couch, The King's Speech running in the background as he fumbles with the knife in his hands and tries to cut a slice out of the apple in front of him without hurting himself. Seijuurou is leaning against his right arm, his eyes closed and breathing labored. His lips part occasionally to mutter about something that Shintarou can't quite make out.

It is still yellow light that filters through the window. It catches the television screen, where the final speech is running. There is too much silence in the scene. Shintarou feels like it's watching him as he accidentally makes a careless cut on his thumb.

Blood hits the apple as clear water and runs off the side.

* * *

White silver general to 5c.

* * *

Shintarou hits his limit the next Monday, after he watches Seijuurou fall to his knees in a dizzy spell when defending against Daiki. The entire team is thrown into a frenzy, with Ryouta and Shuuzo immediately turning and attacking Daiki for foul play while Tetsuya and Atsushi are there with the coach at Seijuurou's side, helping him to his feet. There's no way for Seijuurou to feign being okay any longer—every move he made screamed exhaustion, and he's ordered to go to the nurse's office immediately and lie down for a while before going straight home.

Shintarou is called to help him through the halls, and it's on their way there that he says, quietly, "I'm not doing anything after school today." He doesn't look down, but he can feel Seijuurou's eyes on him immediately. "My mom rented a movie the other day, and told me it was good. We have to return it tomorrow, so do you want to come over today?"

"...Sure."

It's so easy to fall back into their old routine. When they get to Shintarou's house, Seijuurou is immediately stopped by his mother and his sister, who are both ecstatic about seeing him after all this time. Shintarou watches as his sister start off immediately on her tangent of what Seijuurou had missed in these past two weeks, while his mother begins her barrage of questions about his health upon seeing his drawn face. It takes a good thirty minutes before they get their apples and movie and Shintarou makes his sister promise that she wouldn't barge in with her dolls to 'steal the show'.

"I see that nothing's changed," Seijuurou says, already making himself comfortable on the couch with the apple and the knife. Shintarou only sighs, putting in the movie and returning to his usual position on the floor.

There's a moment's hesitation when he see Seijuurou lowering one of his strangely-cut apple slices to his lips, but Shintarou takes it anyway. His face draws at the sour taste. It's a testament to the amount of time they spend together that even Shintarou's mother knew what kinds of apples Seijuurou liked.

The movie starts. It is German, and is about a son lying to his amnesiac mother that the Berlin wall had never been torn down, and that the side that they lived on was still proud and communist, just like the East Germany that she had been very much in love with. Seijuurou is asleep by the end of the first scene. Shintarou takes what's left of the apple core and starts working on it, setting the knife on the table and gently pushing Seijuurou down so his head is cushioned by the armrest. Seijuurou sleepily cracks open one eye in surprise at the sudden shift in position, but his exhaustion is too much and he's out again in minutes.

He is so tired, in fact, that he doesn't wake up until the following afternoon, when Shintarou walks into the living room after having just returned from school. Shintarou is quickly told off for not waking him in the morning and letting him miss his classes.

He doesn't really mind. For the first time in a long time, Seijuurou's eyes were clear again.

* * *

White rook captures black rook on 7f.

* * *

They had, perhaps, one conversation during their first year of high school that is reminiscent of how close they used to be.

Shintarou doesn't remember any specific things they brought up during that conversation, but he does remember that Seijuurou's posture was perfect and his head high and eyes staring shamelessly into his own when he spoke. There was a confidence in him that Shintarou had never seen before, but there was something else too that he couldn't quite put his finger on. Defensiveness? Or perhaps something deeper, and darker.

He muses this while they exchanges cordial greetings and awkwardly ask about how the other is doing in their respective school. They dodge the subject of the Winter Cup and basketball completely, and Shintarou is completely and utterly amazed at Seijuurou's ability to do so.

Shintarou had peeked cautiously at Seijuurou's fingernails, and noticed that they were all clipped perfectly and uniformly.

It's terrifying. He realizes that he doesn't recognize this person at all.

* * *

Black silver general captures white rook on 7f.

* * *

A Running Register of Things that Shintarou Should Not Have Said to Seijuurou:

"Stop stressing about it, it's bad for your health."

"Really. Akashi. Drop it."

"You don't understand. You never understand these things. It's easy for you to claim that everyone has their place in the world. You're already the king. How could you possibly know how a pawn feels?"

"No. Stop. I don't want to listen to this anymore. I'm going home."

* * *

White drops rook on 7i.

* * *

"Midorima."

Shintarou glances over at where Seijuurou is standing by a shelf of overpriced trinkets and bobbles for tourists. His face is extremely blank when he lifts a fake porcelain frog, but Shintarou knows better than to assume that Seijuurou isn't laughing internally.

"Put that thing down," Shintarou says with a glare.

"It's your long lost cousin. You should buy it so your that your whole family can be together."

"Cut it out, Akashi."

Seijuurou is still blank-faced when he sets the frog back down next to fifteen more that look exactly like it, but there's the smallest hint of a smile on the corner of his lips. He taps the frog on the head before turning and walking towards another shelf.

Overhead, a sign reads:

_Lovely to look at_

_Delightful to hold_

_But if you break me,_

_Consider me sold_

* * *

Black drops rook on 7a.

* * *

In his lifetime, Shintarou will never believe in a god.

He believes, instead, in two specific higher powers.

The first is luck.

The second is Akashi Seijuurou.

The second is a mistake.

* * *

White rook captures black knight on 8i. White rook is promoted.

* * *

"What did you think of the new member?" Shintarou asks as he stares at the ceiling of Seijuurou's bedroom. It's as modern as the rest of the house, as if Seijuurou's father had made an extremely weak attempt of keeping his wife alive through adding more unnecessary chrome and shine. He stays laying on his back, picking at a hangnail, in the airbed that Seijuurou practically kept in his closet now for the number of nights he spends over.

Shintarou can hear Seijuurou sighing and turning over, the sheets rustling in a sound that must have meant that he was pulling his blankets up to his chin. "Kise Ryouta is a genius."

"Yes, but more."

"He's fairly fond of Aomine. I saw Kise calling to him after practice today."

"That's all surface level."

There's a pause this time, and Shintarou can nearly feel his sleepy frustration. "Midorima, it's _late_."

"It's the weekend, we can sleep in tomorrow."

"I want to sleep now."

"You'll forget to answer me in the morning."

"Remind me then."

"Akashi—"

"Midorima, you cannot _fathom_ how close you are to not seeing tomorrow," Shintarou hears Seijuurou mumble, voice slurred with how tired he is and muffled by the pillows around his mouth. He clams up.

That is the first time that Shintarou realizes that, if he learns nothing else, that he should never disrupt Seijuurou's sleeping. This includes waking him up in any way that isn't natural, as he will learn that following morning when he tries to shake Seijuurou awake and is met (after a good few minutes of groaning and pulling his blankets over his face) with a withering glare and a croaked, "Fuck off."

* * *

Black rook captures white knight at 8a. Black rook is promoted.

* * *

Shintarou does remember that the first thing he noticed about Seijuurou's room, during his first visit, was not how ridiculously furnished it was, in complete black and white like the rest of the house, nor how the window was lined with plants (which he would later learn were swapped out weekly with new ones by his father)—it was that his bed was unnaturally and impractically large for a child that was only in junior high. It was centered against his back wall, framed by tall windows that were bordered with the branches of dogwood flowers, and took up a good one-third of the space in his entire room.

"It was my mother's idea," Seijuurou had said when he noticed Shintarou staring at it, eyebrows furrowed. The frame was a deep black and the sheets such a stark white that the only source of color in the room, the pink flowers, jumped out and nearly burned Shintarou's eyes. "She designed this entire room, and my father never had the heart to redo it. The flowers were originally hers, too."

"How do you even sleep on a bed so large?" He imagines that sleeping at the center would feel the same as being surrounded by an all-encompassing ocean.

Seijuurou shrugs when Shintarou first asks him that question. He says that he never really thought about it, and that it just took some getting used to. He hardly notices the extra space anymore. It doesn't bother him in the least. That doesn't mean that he likes it, though.

* * *

White pawn to 1e.

* * *

An updated list of the murder weapons as found on the scene:

(x1) bottle of Bordeaux, broken into shards and sitting in a small puddle of deep red

(x1) empty bottle, identified to have once been carrying Paxil

(x1) empty bottle, identified to have once been carrying Zoloft

(x1) empty bottle, identified to have once been carrying Valium

(x7) small grains of powder on the bedroom floor, identified to be LSD

(x1) crumpled note in the hand of a corpse, reading:

_Please do not feel sorry for me._

* * *

Black pawn captures white pawn on 1e.

* * *

Shintarou gets a call a few hours after the funeral. He is coming out of the shower, and water drips from his fingertips as he reaches for the cheap landline in his hotel room. It's Aomine. He's weaseled some information from Imayoshi about Seijuurou's file, and apparently has found something interesting that he wanted Shintarou to know.

"They found him on the left side of the bed," Aomine says, matter-of-factly. "Distinctly on the left, the report said. His arm was dangling above the edge. Just thought you might want to know."

Shintarou hangs up.

* * *

White silver general captures black pawn at 4f.

* * *

A Running Register of Things that Shintarou Should Not Have Said to Seijuurou (cont.):

"We're just two very different people."

"I will never be like you! And you know it, too—we both do."

"So stop pretending."

* * *

Black pawn to 7d.

* * *

Shintarou feels, at this time, that he should clarify something for you —

Seijuurou's mother is not dead in that she is no longer breathing. She's doing quite well, actually. In the year that Seijuurou graduated from Teikou, she finalized her own divorce so expertly that she walked away happily with both a pretty sum of money and a fresh-faced smile. She goes on to marry again and have a small girl, who will have her mother's eye-catching red hair and her father's dark brown eyes, and be brilliant at acting. This small girl will grow very well and debut as an actor in theater and marry old and turn over even more money to her mother. Seijuurou's mother will pass away, long after the death of Seijuurou and his father, by a bullet in her heart from the man that she loved but not the one that she was married to.

Seijuurou is no longer alive at that point, but if he had been, he would have laughed.

* * *

White pawn captures black pawn on 7d.

* * *

"If I had to describe what made me do it?" Shintarou nods. Seijuurou's eyes close as he sighs. "That's impossible."

"Try," Shintarou says.

"No."

They're lucky the room is white. Shintarou's irritation, a dull red halo around his head, is quickly soaked and returned to the colorless state of the rest of the walls. The apple at the center of the table continues rotting, taunting them.

* * *

Black silver general captures white pawn at 6e.

* * *

Shintarou sits in the audience during his sister's piano concert. She has grown well, and has her strikingly colored hair pinned up in a loose pile on her head. She's still small and slender in her early teens, dressed in a long black dress that makes her look too mature too soon in Shintarou's opinion. This is the little girl that will go on to become the concert pianist that Shintarou had once jokingly dreamed of becoming, and she will make their family very proud. She will never tell them that she actually hates the instrument—but that is a minor detail, of course.

The program reads _Waltz in A Minor, op. 124, no. 4 by Robert Schumann_. She plays it perfectly, but doesn't step off of the stage when the song ends after the clapping trickles into silence. There's an awkward pause, and Shintarou wonders what she is doing before she leans back towards the keys and starts again with another song.

Something in him shuts off. His first instinct is that he needs to stand up, to tell her to stop playing that song, that only Seijuurou could play it, that she couldn't play it better than he did or it would break his heart, that her fingers were too light and quick and she played it too fast, that it looked too _effortless_ for her to accomplish something that took Seijuurou months and creased brows and frustrated stomping away from the piano, that Solfeggietto should never be played again in any other way than the way that Seijuurou played it.

But he's struck dumb for too long, doesn't react fast enough. Before he knows it, she's done and standing up to more applause, albeit from very confused audience.

"That was for a family friend that passed away earlier this week," she says when she gets off the piano bench and approaches the microphone that her piano teacher suddenly passes to her, and Shintarou is immediately furious with that man as well for his cooperation in her scheme.

When she comes back down into the audience, Shintarou can't even look at her. He wonders if she did it on purpose—played it so that it would be stuck in his head when he got on the airplane later that day to go to Seijuurou's funeral.

* * *

White king to 2b.

* * *

Shintarou is standing at Seijuurou's grave with a bouquet of wide white lilies and azaleas with tissue-paper petals. A tree next to him, with its limbs bent protectively over the onyx rock, shakes in the wind and scatters a few stray leaves into Shintarou's hair.

"For you," he says, and drops the flowers in front of the grave.

He pulls a red spider lily from the center of the bouquet and sets it on Seijuurou's headstone.

It reads:

_God grant me the serenity _

_To accept the things I cannot change; _

_Courage to change the things I can; _

_And wisdom to know the difference._

* * *

Black silver general captures white silver general at 5d.

* * *

"_Why did you kill yourself_."

"_Why were you so lonely_."

"_Why didn't you say something_."

"_Why couldn't you love me_."

* * *

White pawn captures black silver general at 5d.

* * *

"You know, Shintarou, gods are perfect beings."

"I know."

"Perfect beings lack any imperfection."

Shintarou rolls over on the airbed. It's too dark to see Seijuurou from over the edge of his mattress, but he can imagine him staring at the ceiling, running his fingertips along the veins in his hands.

"True."

"Imperfections are doubt, anger, sadness."

"Happiness, joy."

"Those, too. Lust, greed, pride, the sins."

"Imperfection itself is an imperfection."

"Clever. But you forgot a big one."

"Which one?"

He hears Seijuurou shifting on the bed, pushing his arms under his pillows.

"Death."

"Are you implying that you'd never die?"

Seijuurou falls silent. Looking back on this moment years later, Shintarou realizes that he completely missed the point.

* * *

Black rook captures white pawn at 7d.

* * *

"It's not because I wanted to die, you have to understand that."

"It was just the only option after a while."

"It wasn't about the world being dull or boring."

"It was just..."

"I was sad."

"I apologize, there truly isn't any other word for it."

"Imagine it being...compared to filling a cup? You're trying to fill a cup that has no bottom. Nothing is retained."

"You can fill it as fast as you want. Or with as many different types of liquid as you want."

"It'll still drain out, though, sooner or later."

"After a while, you would just give up, right?"

"...No, Shintarou, please."

"Don't look at me like that."

"It's really not your fault at all. I promise."

"Please don't cry."

The apple is nearly brown now. It's withered, dry. And it looks very pitiful. _Say your last goodbyes_, it's telling them.

* * *

White drops pawn at 7c.

* * *

Akashi closes his eyes and forgets Midorima, forgets their childhood, forgets the rules and the games of shogi that he had played and shared, forgets Teikou, Kuroko Tetsuya, Kise Ryouta, Aomine Daiki, Murasakibara Atsushi, Rakuzan, his college years, his barely-present father, his never-present mother, Midorima's little sister and kind family, everyone's smiles and laughter and names and faces, and then, finally, himself. Only then, in that nothingness, was he finally equal.

And although it didn't matter at that point, at the threshold of the place where infinity exists, that realization made Akashi the happiest since his last laugh with Midorima over five years ago.

* * *

Black rook to 7f.

* * *

Shintarou tells him his one worry, that one biggest worry, when the apple is a deep brown and wrinkling in on itself. He expects Seijuurou to fall quiet, perhaps, to bolster that worry of his, but his reaction surprises Shintarou.

Seijuurou nearly groans. The look in his eyes when he responds is exasperated.

"What on _Earth_ gave you the notion that I could _ever_ dislike you?"

"Not dislike," Shintarou says, but his mouth is dry.

"Like you any less than I have any reason to, then." Seijuurou shakes his head. "You're insufferable, you know that? Absolutely ridiculous. This is how you've lived all those years, thinking I've just been tolerating you?"

"You've hinted towards it."

"Have I _really_ though?" Seijuurou leans in, eyes narrowing, unamused, and his voice dry and merciless. "_Really_?" And Shintarou doesn't have a response for him.

* * *

White pawn to 4e.

* * *

Shintarou stands on the hill of Akashi's grave and turns his face up to the sky. It's night—not sunset. Not midnight. Just night.

There are stars. Pinpricks. Not silver, not yellow. A blinding white, tiny, like holes poked through a cardboard box that had been painted black.

There is a moon. It's large. Luminescent. Cripplingly beautiful in its imperfection as a sphere that's nearly half filled. This moon is crafted from the finest silver, strung into the sky with a thin thread that can't be seen by human eyes.

Clouds. Abundant, thick, traveling in clumps and wisps and handfuls. The moonlight filters through them as they blow through the sky, faster than normal. It had rained earlier in the day—the fitful rain from a higher being that's throwing a tantrum.

The breeze is cold and sharp from the rain and digs its fingers in Shintarou's cheeks with a sweet pain. It throws around his hair like a fond relative, and then whistles up to settle in the leaves and branches of the weeping willow. There it shifts, watching him with a keen eye while its brethren pass their time tugging the trees around.

That night, Shintarou physically witnesses the sky turning around the earth like a blanket and feels his body weight unconsciously shifting backwards in response to the reminder that the clouds were so distant and unreachable. He closes his eyes. The world jerks under his feet, and then he's both dangling upside down on Earth, with his imminent death postponed only by the weight in his feet, and standing at the top, at the pinnacle of existence. He's alone in the graveyard and can hear nothing but the chirping and calling of raw life surrounding him, feeling the cold air reaching under his coat and stripping him of his skin and the burn of moonlight on the backs of his eyelids, and he wants to laugh with hysteria and woe and exaltation.

Shintarou lays a hand on Akashi's headstone. It's frigid.

"I'll stop trying."

* * *

Black drops pawn at 8c.

* * *

Shintarou opens his eyes. He's sitting in a classroom. It's drenched in sun, and the light drips off his clothes and pools on the ground. Captured shogi pieces litter his side of the game board, and an equal amount are gathered around Seijuurou's side of the board. He's numb from sitting for so long, but he doesn't complain because Seijuurou didn't complain.

He tries to smile, but it hurts the corners of his mouth. Seijuurou's lips are moving, but no sound is coming out. That's because what Seijuurou is saying right now is irrelevant. He is waiting for something else.

Seijuurou moves a piece. Shintarou doesn't exactly remember what piece it had been that he had moved last time. Perhaps a gold general? Or a pawn? But he needed to defend his king, moving that pawn would be unwise. Perhaps his rook. His finger taps on the desk with the false notion that the decision he made was going to matter.

He moves a random piece, and Seijuurou's brow furrows. It takes a good few minutes before he starts to reach forward. His fingers will never touch the piece.

Shintarou closes his eyes. Now.

The door slides open, and he sees someone with a blurry face moving towards them. Seijuurou's head turns immediately, as if surprised that anyone could possibly exist in their own little world. Shintarou turns his head back down to the board, knowing that any false move from him could completely break the memory.

"Akashi-kun, the coach needs to see you."

Shintarou recalls the hesitation in Seijuurou, recalls how he almost tapped into his more childish and age-appropriate side and asked, "Right now?" In the end though, he did what he always does—stand up, reluctantly, and tell the messenger that he was on his way. The messenger nods and closes the door.

Shintarou looks up. This is where it ends.

When he looks at Akashi for the last time, his friend is haloed in an orange sun that dyes his uniform like a warm and soft fire. His hair is as red and defiant, like it was the moment Shintarou met him and expected him to be so much less than he turned out to be, and even his figure is heated underneath from the light that had wormed its way under his skin. He had always been stubborn, blunt, oblivious, but dedicated and quick—and so, so terribly smart. Shintarou truly had loved him, even if he didn't quite realize himself, in all his perfection and imperfection, and it was because he had known Akashi the best that he had also known that, in this world, there would never be a time when they could be together the way he had wanted to. Perhaps Akashi had known that, himself? Shintarou wouldn't be surprised if he had.

This is the last time they will see each other. Shintarou should say something meaningful, but he can't. Words aren't enough for what he needs to convey. Maybe that's for the better.

"I'll go," he hears Akashi say, and then he looks up and sees the apologetic smile on his face. "Hey, play for me?"

("What?" Midorima asked, his eyes widening.

"You know what move I'd make," Akashi said quickly, standing up from his seat. He's already halfway across the room before he said, as an afterthought, "And then when I get back, we can just leave and go back to my house for the movie."

"Well since we both know what move you're going to play anyway, I'll just clean up."

Midorima made to reach forward and swipe the pieces off the board so he could pack things up, but Akashi called out, "Even if we both know, it doesn't make it final. It'll never be settled just who won this match because the move wouldn't actually be carried out—it would just die like an idea in both of our minds. We could carry on saying that this match was '_technically_' won by someone, but it wouldn't have the same gravity because it wouldn't '_actually_' be won by either of us, and—"

Midorima sighed. Akashi was just in one of his moods and was just going out of his way to be difficult, so he just waved at him with a free hand and said, "Fine, fine, fine I get it, just go already, don't keep the coach waiting." Akashi's grin grew, until it was nearly impish.

"I'll be back in ten," he promised. And then he darted out the door.

Midorima didn't play his move. Of course he wouldn't, Akashi was just being ridiculous. Once he was sure that Akashi had made it down the hall, he pushed all of the pieces off the board and starting packing them away.)

"Of course," Shintarou says, managing a small smile. Akashi beams at him, and his face becomes blurry again.

"I'll be back in ten," he promises, but his voice already sounds far away. He makes his way out the door, and it falls back into place after him. Then there's silence.

Shintarou stands up. He walks around to Akashi's side of the table and he sits down.

He sees Midorima sitting opposite, his brows furrowed in thought and his face small and round with baby fat. He sees the chalkboard at the front of the room, and the window to his left instead of his right. He sees the tree right outside the window, and the sparse leaves that fall from it.

He sees himself, focused on the board for a move that he wouldn't be able to make. Shintarou pities him and his naivety, and his ignorance, and the mistakes that he would come to make in the future—but loves him for the hope that's still in his face, the happiness that's still lining his bottom lip and human tears that would line his lower lashes in the future, and he was beautiful and lovely as well.

Shintarou wishes him luck, and watches as Midorima looks up and stares right at him and smiles and mouths something important that Shintarou can't hear and will never decipher.

The boy turns to glass and shatters. A single red apple falls onto the seat where he was sitting, and rolls off the edge of the chair and onto the ground. The sunlight swallows the apple, and leaves the room in silence again.

Shintarou is once again left alone in the world.

He no longer needs to ask what's so important about this game now, because he has figured it all out.

This particular game had been important not because it had been the start of anything.

Rather, the problem was that nothing had ended.

"And we don't do things halfway," he says aloud.

The sun dips down as he reaches forward for the piece.

* * *

White gold general takes black promoted pawn on 6c.

* * *

One man sits alone in his hotel room at the end of a very long day. He is drenched in moonlight and suffocating in the silence and crickets of the night. It is twenty-eight weeks after the death of Akashi Seijuurou. They will finally find peace, soon.

In front of him is an extremely expensive but simple-looking shogi board—one that had been gifted to Shintarou from his best friend right after he passed away twenty-eight weeks ago.

It is very beautiful. The sound it makes when pieces are set on it is both hollow and full. The one made when the _ is set, softly, on _, echoes across the room.

Shintarou looks down. He can't smile, but something in him is right.

"Checkmate," he says.

* * *

_inspired by the music video for Nell's The Day Before. _

_movies referenced: I Killed My Mother, Goodbye Lenin, The King's Speech_

_thank you for reading! xx_


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